“The Eejit,” “3-D Funk,” and “Womanfish”: The Joshua Tree Demo Recordings

Original Story by Aaron J. Sams (2017-02-28)

You may have realized we like digging through old bootlegs and discovering rare recordings from our earlier two part article on U2’s pre-Island Records demo sessions. (Part I | Part II) It should come as no surprise that we decided to look at the known information about demos from The Joshua Tree album. The Joshua Tree produced a wealth of B-Sides which is where many of the working sessions for the album ended up, but there are a few other oddities out there that deserve a look.

IMAGE: The Edge in 1998 holding a cassette copy of the original 4 Track demo of “Where the Streets Have No Name”

First, there are the early versions of the songs that made it to The Joshua Tree. These are songs that appeared on the final album, but we know some of the information about earlier versions of these songs including alternate titles. Have you heard of these titles? “3-D Funk,” “Small Tribe,” “Executioner’s Song,” “Salvador,” “Scrape,” “Weather Girls” and “The Eejit.” All of these were early titles for songs being worked on for The Joshua Tree and all went on to evolve into songs that made it onto the final album. Some of these titles are better known than others. “Weather Girls” (sometimes referred to as “Under the Weather”) for instance was once, incorrectly, identified as “With or Without You” in Propaganda Magazine. But there have been many interviews with those involved in the recording sessions that have identified “Weather Girls” as an early version of “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.”

In the booklet for the deluxe version of The Joshua Tree album, The Edge spoke about “Weather Girls”:

“Desert Of Our Love,” aka “Weather Girls,” which ultimately became “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” was the first breakthrough of the record. A mix of reggae and gospel rhythms, it was never going to be an ordinary song. This is its earliest incarnation still showing its traditional roots. I played piano for the backing track. We held onto the drums, and maybe the bass, but everything else got replaced.

In the video Classic Albums: The Joshua Tree, Daniel Lanois speaks about this song calling it “The Weather Girls” and once again identifying it as an early version of “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” We have also seen references to this song as “Under the Weather”.

VIDEO: “Desert of our Love” from the 20th Anniversary Edition of The Joshua Tree

“Salvador” went on to become “Mothers of the Disappeared” on the final album. “Exit” had been partially inspired by Norman Mailer’s novel “The Executioner’s Song,” so perhaps its no surprise that the song had been developed under the title “Executioner’s Song” for a period during the recording sessions. Some of the other titles are probably a little less known in the internet age. “3-D Funk” was an early working title for “Where the Streets Have No Name,” a song that dominated the working sessions on the album as U2 attempted to get it finished, and which Eno even attempted to delete so the band would move on to other things.

“Small Tribe” was an early version of “One Tree Hill,” “Scrape” was an early version of “Running to Stand Still” and “The Eejit,” as we revealed in our interview with the Arklow Shipping Silver Band, was an early version of “Red Hill Mining Town.” None of these earlier demos for these songs have appeared, all we have are early titles for these recordings. Although the video Classic Albums: The Joshua Tree does include clips of Lanois playing around at the mixing desk, including some sounds recorded that did not make the final mix. The recording of “Desert of our Love” was released on the 20th anniversary remaster of The Joshua Tree. The version released had no additional recording in 2007 and is believed to be from the original sessions.

TV GAGA Performance

On January 30, 1986, while continuing to work on the album The Joshua Tree, U2 appeared on the television program “TV Gaga” on RTÉ in Ireland with Paddy Talbot hosting in a Dublin studio. On the show, the band played three songs:

• “Womanfish”
• “Trip Through Your Wires”
• “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” [Not a U2 song]

“Womanfish” was an early song developed for the album, which has never shown up in any form, but was performed live in studio that night. The song “Trip Through Your Wires” was still very much a work in progress, slower than the later released version.

VIDEO: “Womanfish” from the RTÉ TV GAGA Performance, January 30, 1986

The Edge discussed the performance in the book U2 by U2:

There were some very rough versions of what became ‘With Or Without You,’ ‘Red Hill Mining Town‘; a song of Bono’s called ‘Trip Through Your Wires,’ and a song called ‘Woman Fish‘ that mercifully never saw the light of day, other than on an Irish TV show that we agreed to do in a moment of dementia. We hadn’t shot ourselves in the foot for a while, so with two songs half written we decided it was the perfect time to go to the nation to showcase our ‘new direction.’ It was dreadful, the worst in a long line of ropey TV appearances. The idea, if there was one, was to try out the new material in front of a live audience. We found out instantly that we had a long way to go. We tried later to bribe the staff of RTÉ to give us the tapes, but it turned out they had shared our opinion of the performance, and hadn’t thought it worth keeping.

The lyrics have an interesting reference, “One thin tin can man”, which Bono may have lifted from “Silver and Gold” where he references “In this tin can town”. Bono himself in the performance on TV Gaga described the song as “That was Womanfish. And we’re just, its about a mermaid I met once, we met once in America”. The lyrics for “Womanfish” are below, to the best of our ability to decipher them, it’s been suggested that Bono may have been having a few drinks that night.

“Womanfish” by U2

One horse town,
The breeze will come and blow us down.

VIDEO: “I Trip Through Your Wires” from the RTÉ TV GAGA Performance, January 30, 1986

“Trip Through Your Wires” was introduced as “I Trip Through Your Wire” and it is a rough version of the song presented for the TV audience. Very little is recognizable about the lyrics at this point, although the chorus “You I’m waiting for you / You you set my desire / I trip through your wire.” appears in the song and is very close to the final version. It is obvious that Bono hadn’t finished work on the lyrics of this one. The song itself is recognizable, but played a little slower. The full lyrics are below:

“I Trip Through Your Wire” by U2

In this town
Your tide is turning
In this town. In this town.

The Sweetest Thing and Borrowed Tapes

A decade ago, a demo version of “The Sweetest Thing” appeared on YouTube with very rough early lyrics. The information provided with the video lists: “this recording was made as a test of the recording system prior to the recording of Joshua Tree. I was fortunate enough to watch and hear Bono make up sweetest thing for the first time ever and as He ensured that I took a recording away”. It’s definitely Bono on the track, and it sounds like there’s additional voices at the end of the track. At the end of the video are some credits which suggest it is Bono on vocals and Larry Mullen on drums, but that Adam and The Edge were not part of this recording and the remainder was played by Steve Rainford, Pat McCarthy, Jeremy Wilson and Selene.

VIDEO: “The Sweetest Thing” (Demo Version)
For those who want to see the original version with the kittens and the credits you’ll have to visit here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AFpxZRxbyU

Steve Rainford was a U2 crew member, who originally hailed from Liverpool, and acted as a guitar roadie for The Edge, starting with the band in 1983 and still working with them while work was progressing on The Joshua Tree. Steve was profiled in the first issue of Propaganda magazine. Pat McCarthy was the Assistant Engineer on The Joshua Tree. As for Jeremy Wilson, there was a website by a Jeremy Wilson that once worked for AMEK, who traveled and set up systems in recording studios. He mentions, “Around this time I also installed an AMEK Angela console for UB40 in their ex-slaughterhouse facility in Birmingham, I put another Angela into Human League front man Phil Oakey’s bedroom and took an M2500 over to a house in Rathfarnham, Dublin where to my surprise the popular beat combo U2 came in and recorded their best selling Joshua Tree album. (AMEK even get a mention in the credits!)”

“The Sweetest Thing” (Demo Version)

Outside in the rain is a roman star
oh oh sweetest thing
Inside, inside the sun is born
oh oh sweetest thing
hold on tight
going to shut out the night and day
Light, long time
oh oh sweetest thing
oh oh oh oh oh…
sweetest thing
sweetest thing

That version of “The Sweetest Thing” isn’t the only oddity that has shown up over the years. In 1996 there was a strange post on Wire, aka U2-List, a mailing list populated by U2 fans. The person posting claimed he had three different 60 minute cassettes, and that all three cassettes contained rare demos and recordings from The Joshua Tree. The poster was not looking to share however, and was looking to make some money, offering the tapes at a price. The claim was that the person who had posted had been entrusted with the master tapes of the studio recordings for the album. While transporting them, or perhaps after arriving at studio, the poster claimed to have been able to make a copy. Regulars on U2-List were quick to ask for proof, and the poster agreed to share a number of short snippets from the recordings setting up a website to do this. The website was quickly shut down, before fans had an opportunity to save most of these tracks, but at least seven separate tracks were saved, and have circulated in bootleg circles for years.

These are not full recordings. They are seen different tracks and they range from 17 seconds at the shortest to 49 seconds at the longest of the set. They do appear to be legitimate and they gave U2 fans an additional listen to some tracks that had not made it to the final album, and had not shown up as b-sides. One of these did appear on the 2007 remaster of The Joshua Tree proving that they did indeed come from U2, and that somewhere other versions of these songs exist.

VIDEO: The Joshua Tree Demo Snippets

Why would someone be transporting the master tapes around town? That was the story given, but its never been confirmed, so it could just be a story. However, at around the same time these tapes were supposedly “copied” Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs (MFSL) were working on a series of releases on “Ultradisc” and in each case they required access to the albums master tapes. U2 released three albums in the series, The Joshua Tree, The Unforgettable Fire and War and there is evidence U2 had provided the master tapes, as the cuts used on the War Ultradisc were alternate recordings to what had appeared on the original albums. Again there is no evidence that this was how the snippets actually made it out, but at the time the MFSL recording was in the works.

At the time, fans gave the seven tracks names based on brief snippets of lyrics that could be heard during the tracks themselves. “In the Doorstep” or “Golden Light,” “Tell Them the Story,” “Dance With Me Baby,” “And You Didn’t Make Any Enemies,” “Move Up,” “Present Tense,” “Diamond Store” or just “Diamond.” These were not official names for the tracks but that has not stopped them appearing as such in lists of songs from these eras.

At the time two of the seven tracks were identifiable as early demos of “Race Against Time” (the song titled “Move Up”) and “Walk to the Water” (the song titled “Present Tense”). With the release of the remastered set in 2007, we can identify another one as an early version of “Rise Up” (the song titled “In the Doorstep” or “Golden Light”) which featured on the bonus disc on that release. A fourth track featured the guitar part that would become “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” (the song titled “And You Didn’t Make Any Enemies” which may have been an early version of “Weather Girls”). The songs here are earlier versions than that which were released as B-Sides. That leaves three tracks that are still unidentified meaning there’s likely some demo tapes still out there to pull some additional material from.

The 20th Anniversary Collection

Beyond the B-sides we all knew and loved over the years, when The Joshua Tree was reissued in 1987 there were a number of tracks added to the release. These demos included five songs we had not heard in completed form before the release. One of these was the previous mentioned “Desert Of Our Love”, a version of the song that would become “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” and also was known as “Weather Girls.” This song appeared to be untouched from its 1987 form.

IMAGE: Bono in studio during recording of The Joshua Tree

Two other songs were also identical to their early forms, one of these is “Beautiful Ghost / Introduction to Songs of Experience.” The Edge speaks about this track in the booklet accompanying the release, “‘Beautiful Ghost’ was a song that started out as an experimental demo which we finished later, recorded in STS studios with Paul Barrett, in what is now known as the Temple Bar district of Dublin city. It’s always interesting to hear where we started from, and then to hear where we ended up. This and other early demos show how much of the musical identity of the final record came into focus along the way. If I remember correctly we recorded our version of ‘Silver and Gold’ in the same studio.” Another song which appears untouched since the 1987 recordings is “Rise Up”, of which Edge says: “‘Rise Up’ was an ultra-optimistic piece that could only have come out of a session at the beginning of the process of making a record, when everyone still believes that it will be easy, when the sharpness of many days and nights of work has not yet arrived. Danesmote is all over this recording sonically. It was a contender for a while but never had the substance.” “Rise Up” as mentioned above featured among the leaked demo clips.

VIDEO: “Rise Up” from the 20th Anniversary The Joshua Tree

There were two additional songs included, but both of these were newly polished up in 2007 with additional recording and mixing being done by Carl Glanville. One of these took an old U2 instrumental titled “Drunk Chicken” and married it with a poem read by Allen Ginsberg. The Edge said, “The track used for the Allen Ginsberg poem ‘America’ was one of the first recordings we made in Danesmote. It was given the working title ‘Drunk Chicken.’ It’s all Eno in truth, Brian started the improvisation and although we were all willing it never quite got past its Enoesque origins. It’s clear from this track that we were still searching for clues, looking for the end of the thread.”

The final track included on this remaster was “Wave of Sorrow (Birdland)”. Like “Drunk Chicken” this song was newly edited and featured new recordings of Bono mixed with an older audio track. The recording and mixing was done by Carl Glanville. During the original sessions in 1987, the song had been called “Birdland” and U2 got to it too late, and never had time to finish it. Feeling it was too good to be relegated to a B-Side, they chose to finish it later, and it took them 20 years to get back to it. Bono composed new lyrics and the song became “Wave of Sorrow”.

Bonus Tracks

VIDEO: “Move Out” from San Francisco, April 26, 1987

Shortly after the release of The Joshua Tree, the tour started, taking U2 throughout North America. And at least at one stop along the way, at Cow Palace, in San Francisco, U2 were caught on tape rehearsing during their soundcheck and playing around with two new songs. The Cow Palace show took place on April 25, 1987, just over a month after the album had been released, so it is likely that these two songs had come out of the sessions for The Joshua Tree as well.

Both songs start out with U2 playing around with “Mothers of the Disappeared” but then switch into other songs. In some cases these songs have been called “My Time Hasn’t Come” and “Move Out”. The one identified as “Move Out” may be a later version of the song referred to as “Dance With Me Baby” from the leaked recordings. The other song, “My Time Hasn’t Come” is a slower song and doesn’t seem to relate to the other earlier tracks, it seems less finished, so may be something new started after the sessions for the album had concluded. “Move Out” is embedded above, but “My Time Hasn’t Come” was not found but is available on numerous bootlegs from that era.

Appendix A: The Joshua Tree Singles Releases

The following is a short discography of singles released from The Joshua Tree, featuring the most common tracks found around the world. If you wish to have more information please click on the title link to see a full discography for the single.

With or Without You (March 16, 1987)

• With or Without You
• Luminous Times
• Walk to the Water

I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For (May 25, 1987)

• I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For
• Spanish Eyes
• Deep in the Heart

Where the Streets Have No Name (August 31, 1987)

• Where the Streets Have No Name (Single Version)
• Silver and Gold (Single Version)
• Sweetest Thing (Studio Version 1987)
• Race Against Time

In God’s Country (November 17, 1987)

• In God’s Country
• Bullet the Blue Sky
• Running to Stand Still

One Tree Hill (March 7, 1988)

• In God’s Country
• Bullet the Blue Sky
• Running to Stand Still

Appendix B: Other Full Band Releases from this Period

These are recordings done during the period that U2 were recording The Joshua Tree that feature the full band. Both songs were recorded with Robbie Robertson in August 1986 at Danesmoate studio where U2 were recording. The songs were produced by Daniel Lanois. These were released on “Robbie Robertson“, October 26, 1987.

• “Testimony” – U2 with Robbie Robertson (and various remixes)
• “Sweet Fire of Love” – U2 with Robbie Robertson

Appendix C: Contents of Deluxe Version of The Joshua Tree bonus disc

• “Luminous Times (Hold on to Love)” (Studio Version) (04:35) – U2
• “Walk to the Water” (Studio Version) (04:49) – U2
• “Spanish Eyes” (Studio Version) (03:16) – U2
• “Deep in the Heart” (Studio Version) (04:31) – U2
• “Silver and Gold” (Studio Version) (04:38) – U2
• “Sweetest Thing” (Studio Version 1987) (03:04) – U2
• “Race Against Time” (Studio Version) (04:03) – U2
• “Where the Streets Have No Name” (Single Version) (04:50) – U2
• “Silver and Gold” (Solo Version) (04:44) – Bono, Keith Richards, & Ron Wood
• “Beautiful Ghost / Introduction to Songs of Experience” (Studio Version) (03:56) – U2
• “Wave Of Sorrow (Birdland)” (Studio Version) (04:06) – U2
• “Desert Of Our Love” (Studio Version) (04:59) – U2
• “Rise Up “ (Studio Version) (04:08) – U2
• “Drunk Chicken / America “ (Studio Version) (01:31) – U2 with Allen Ginsberg

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